My daughter watches adverts, and like any other child who watches adverts, she sees toys and jingles and things get lodged in her head. She knows Lelly Kelly shoes, Unicorn Poop (sadly real) and loads more. She sees me and my wife collecting the odd Funko Pop and she wants them too. All of us like to get the occasional Lego minifig blind bag and hope it will be the one we want.
(very happy that I have a Wizard of Oz Scarecrow minifig on my desk now!)
So just a small thought: what would an in-RPG collectible look like? What would a world with elves and dwarves have that would be interesting and thematic? Why should someone care? (player and character)
It can't just be about "getting a better sword" or "finding the three Zanthar Crystals" or some kind of key that's in four bits. What, small, interesting, non-trivial things could there be?
Showing posts with label game ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game ideas. Show all posts
Monday, 15 April 2019
Tuesday, 9 April 2019
Recent Games...
...but not RPGs!
It's spring break here for my daughter, so lots of family time, the odd snatched hour or two of work to keep things ticking over, and little-to-no time for thinking or writing about RPGs.
Correction: little-to-no time spent thinking or writing about RPGs, as I've had time, I've just chosen to spend it playing games on my PS4. I got a game bundle last week and have played and completed two short games and messed about with a third. All have got me thinking parallel things about RPGs...
Hue is a side-scrolling puzzle game. The title character, Hue, is trying to find his mum, a scientist. They both live in a 2D black and white world, but his mum has figured out a way to "see" other colours. Hue gathers pieces of a magic ring that helps him shift his perception to see or not see other colours; when he chooses to not see, say, red, then red walls disappear, red spikes can't stab him and so on. The puzzles get tricky, the story is charming and there's a nice philosophical flavour running throughout. But it got me wondering about ideas like that in RPGs. Are there systems, rules, mechanics that just let someone veto effects? Maybe as super-ultra-powerful magic items, but what about just regular little artefacts... I wonder...
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is a game I finished in one four hour sitting. A beautiful, haunting game, you play as someone (it's never revealed who you are) exploring an empty English country town. No one is around, but there's evidence that something very, very strange has happened. As you explore you find ghostly echoes of the people who lived there, and piece together the story that has lead to this strange situation. It's amazing, it's deeply emotional, it's incredibly gorgeous to look at and I've not been able to stop thinking about it since last Friday night. It's got me thinking about two player games, role-playing games of exploration, games with very few instructions, games to explore difficult topics (there's a lot to unpack in Rapture about life, death and legacy) and a lot more. If you get the chance, play this game.
The Flame in the Flood is hard. It's a rogue-like game set on a great flooded river. Scout and her dog are rafting downstream trying not to drown. When they find a camp site or an abandoned town they explore for food, supplies, clean water and things they might need. Everything wants to kill you. Water is mostly polluted, so has to be cleaned. Filters break after three uses so replacements have to be found or made. The nights get cold so you need to make clothes. Animals are all around but hard to catch. Walk by some thorns and you'll get scratches; don't treat them and you'll get infected and die. Can't cook the food you find? Food poisoning. Eat too many berries? Stomach ache. And so on. Flame is really hard, but there is a neat little game concept that could help a lot.
Whenever you start the game, you're shown Scout's dog dragging a backpack away from someone who has died. Scout takes the little backpack and puts it on the dog, and it becomes a kind of second inventory (the third is what goes on your raft). To begin with I thought this was just a kind of extra little item slot and nothing more, but then I realised: those six item slots persist between games. If you have a jar of water and a piece of jerky in the dog's pack and die, when you start a new game it's in the new pack.
So... The dead body that your dog finds at the start of the game is YOU, holding your last dog's little pack...
And... If you're about to die in the game and you can you should load the most useful items into the dog's backpack so the next Scout can use them.
Also... What games do interesting things between a dying character and a new one? Yes, people pick over a dead character body for treasure and items; the interesting thing in The Flame in the Flood I think is the weird metaphysical connection between the characters that the items creates. So what other kinds of things could we do in games? Persistence of memory? Persistence of consciousness somehow? Clones that pop up when your character dies? (played in a oneshot game that did that actually!) A chance to send a small portion of your inventory to the next character, who is somehow connected to you?
Friends, take my sword to my daughter, tell her to avenge me...
So not much writing and thinking about stuff that was in my head a few weeks ago (although more on Troika! as soon as I can get my thoughts in order) but lots of thoughts.
It's spring break here for my daughter, so lots of family time, the odd snatched hour or two of work to keep things ticking over, and little-to-no time for thinking or writing about RPGs.
Correction: little-to-no time spent thinking or writing about RPGs, as I've had time, I've just chosen to spend it playing games on my PS4. I got a game bundle last week and have played and completed two short games and messed about with a third. All have got me thinking parallel things about RPGs...
Hue is a side-scrolling puzzle game. The title character, Hue, is trying to find his mum, a scientist. They both live in a 2D black and white world, but his mum has figured out a way to "see" other colours. Hue gathers pieces of a magic ring that helps him shift his perception to see or not see other colours; when he chooses to not see, say, red, then red walls disappear, red spikes can't stab him and so on. The puzzles get tricky, the story is charming and there's a nice philosophical flavour running throughout. But it got me wondering about ideas like that in RPGs. Are there systems, rules, mechanics that just let someone veto effects? Maybe as super-ultra-powerful magic items, but what about just regular little artefacts... I wonder...
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is a game I finished in one four hour sitting. A beautiful, haunting game, you play as someone (it's never revealed who you are) exploring an empty English country town. No one is around, but there's evidence that something very, very strange has happened. As you explore you find ghostly echoes of the people who lived there, and piece together the story that has lead to this strange situation. It's amazing, it's deeply emotional, it's incredibly gorgeous to look at and I've not been able to stop thinking about it since last Friday night. It's got me thinking about two player games, role-playing games of exploration, games with very few instructions, games to explore difficult topics (there's a lot to unpack in Rapture about life, death and legacy) and a lot more. If you get the chance, play this game.
The Flame in the Flood is hard. It's a rogue-like game set on a great flooded river. Scout and her dog are rafting downstream trying not to drown. When they find a camp site or an abandoned town they explore for food, supplies, clean water and things they might need. Everything wants to kill you. Water is mostly polluted, so has to be cleaned. Filters break after three uses so replacements have to be found or made. The nights get cold so you need to make clothes. Animals are all around but hard to catch. Walk by some thorns and you'll get scratches; don't treat them and you'll get infected and die. Can't cook the food you find? Food poisoning. Eat too many berries? Stomach ache. And so on. Flame is really hard, but there is a neat little game concept that could help a lot.
Whenever you start the game, you're shown Scout's dog dragging a backpack away from someone who has died. Scout takes the little backpack and puts it on the dog, and it becomes a kind of second inventory (the third is what goes on your raft). To begin with I thought this was just a kind of extra little item slot and nothing more, but then I realised: those six item slots persist between games. If you have a jar of water and a piece of jerky in the dog's pack and die, when you start a new game it's in the new pack.
So... The dead body that your dog finds at the start of the game is YOU, holding your last dog's little pack...
And... If you're about to die in the game and you can you should load the most useful items into the dog's backpack so the next Scout can use them.
Also... What games do interesting things between a dying character and a new one? Yes, people pick over a dead character body for treasure and items; the interesting thing in The Flame in the Flood I think is the weird metaphysical connection between the characters that the items creates. So what other kinds of things could we do in games? Persistence of memory? Persistence of consciousness somehow? Clones that pop up when your character dies? (played in a oneshot game that did that actually!) A chance to send a small portion of your inventory to the next character, who is somehow connected to you?
Friends, take my sword to my daughter, tell her to avenge me...
So not much writing and thinking about stuff that was in my head a few weeks ago (although more on Troika! as soon as I can get my thoughts in order) but lots of thoughts.
Saturday, 16 March 2019
Found In One Folder
I need to sort out my game collection, which includes a few books and zines, a ton of pdfs that I can't even bear to look at for the most part and many, many random folders of things that I've started writing, noted down or half-considered.
In one folder, picked at random for sorting out this morning, I've found:
I have at least a dozen more physical folders of various sizes.
I have to get organised.
In one folder, picked at random for sorting out this morning, I've found:
- Probability calculations for rolling n dice and getting at least one 6.
- Probability calculations for rolling 2 dice and keeping the highest result.
- Pages of notes for random setting generating a series of systems in Diaspora.
- A sketch of a rumours table for a fantasy city I remember thinking about.
- Notes for a new game of Dogs In The Vineyard (I say "new" - the notes are over five years old).
- Notes for a zombie hack of Dogs called Dead In The Graveyard (ugh, such a terrible name!) which didn't get very far, but which had - I think - the neat idea of renaming the stats "brains, brawn, blood and guts".
- What looks like a scrap of paper with PBTA game notes, but right in the centre a single question, "What happened at the Bus Station?" - and I have no idea why that's there...
- Notes on a two-player game inspired by the awful movie After Earth, for a game where two people play characters separated at great distance. One person has experience but is gravely injured, one can move freely but needs guidance. Both will die if they can't work together. There was a wonderful concept in After Earth that didn't work given the world details in the movie, but I wondered (and still do) if there's a neat little story game in there.
I have at least a dozen more physical folders of various sizes.
I have to get organised.
Wednesday, 13 March 2019
A Neat Discovery...
...and a meandering muse on short games...
One of the funnest things I did when I was making A Random Encounter was make the short games that I did as little print bonuses. Escape The Undermaze and Thursday Night were inspired by Chris McDowall's one-page hack of Into The Odd, and what really appealed to me was this idea of having something complete in just a single-page, where every element that you would need to setup and run a fun, interesting, exciting game was there.Just add a GM, some players and imagination!!!
...or something...
I've been reflecting on both of those games for a while, as I have some ideas for a collection of games/settings, like an anthology of potential stories. A common system, probably heavily influenced by Into The Odd because it's simple and great, but with double spreads that are like mini-modules. A complete session on two pages. Some tables, some inspiration, but the GM and players make it into an enjoyable evening; hopefully, with seeds and ideas scattered through the stories/games that connect things up an interesting way.
Anyway, that's for a much longer post and another day! I like the simplicity of having just a few simple rules and a couple of tables, and I thought a few days ago, "I wonder if I could really strip that down and make a simple game - maybe for the 200 Word RPG Challenge! Isn't that coming up soon?"
I think it is! Probably, hopefully announcing soon. I decided to "check out the competition" and see what was submitted last year. There were lots of entries, but I clicked on the first title that really jumped out at me...
...and wouldn't you know it, someone has beat me to it. A simple game, a neat structure, several short tables for inspiration, a working - and interesting - system and all in 200 words. Levon Jihanian is a genius.
Seriously, go check out Fuck! It's Dracula. You won't be sorry!
Monday, 11 March 2019
Illness In Games
On Saturday morning I woke up with a cold. By tea-time I was hunched over in bed, shivering and shaking as my temperature crept up close to 40 degrees (nearly 104 if you're Fahrenheit-inclined). When I woke up on Sunday morning my fever was completely gone, but since then I've continued to have aches, pains, cold symptoms and general body discomfort. Nothing major, not compared to people in real distress, but enough to make me go "Urgh!" at the thought of doing anything.
(so of course this coming week is busy than the last two combined when it comes to my day job...)
But all of this got me thinking about illness in games - or more specifically, the fact that I can't remember EVER playing in a game where any character, mine or another party PC, got sick. People got injured, sometimes badly, but they never stumbled around through a cave because they had earache, you know? They never sneezed inappropriately due to complications from dwarf pox.
Maybe it would be boring. I remember that, as we were coming to an end of a small campaign in a D&D game, my character got petrified. There was about half an hour left in the session, we didn't know if or when we would pick it up again and so I sat there listening, twiddling my thumbs and calculating my character's weight now that he was stone and not flesh. I understand why I didn't roll stats or become a random pregen, but it was a little boring.
Maybe pretending to sneeze or wheeze or groan would be dull too. Simply adding a penalty to some rolls doesn't feel like quite enough...
...but I can imagine a little fun in character and NPC interactions maybe. Nevermind charisma rolls, but how does the High Priestess look upon you when you have dragon boils? Or even just a simple cold, with red-rimmed eyes, streaming nose and slight clumsiness?
Maybe getting sick in a game is a sign that you need to rest your character. You could push on through the jungle, try to find a trail to the Hidden City of Somewhere, but you'll make things worse. Three days of rest at camp should see you right though (of course, someone else might get there first...).
I'm definitely not an expert on games, not by a long shot, I just can't think of any games that I've played in, run or read which have rules for the consequences of simple (or complicated) illness.
Can you? What would you do if characters got sick?
(so of course this coming week is busy than the last two combined when it comes to my day job...)
But all of this got me thinking about illness in games - or more specifically, the fact that I can't remember EVER playing in a game where any character, mine or another party PC, got sick. People got injured, sometimes badly, but they never stumbled around through a cave because they had earache, you know? They never sneezed inappropriately due to complications from dwarf pox.
Maybe it would be boring. I remember that, as we were coming to an end of a small campaign in a D&D game, my character got petrified. There was about half an hour left in the session, we didn't know if or when we would pick it up again and so I sat there listening, twiddling my thumbs and calculating my character's weight now that he was stone and not flesh. I understand why I didn't roll stats or become a random pregen, but it was a little boring.
Maybe pretending to sneeze or wheeze or groan would be dull too. Simply adding a penalty to some rolls doesn't feel like quite enough...
...but I can imagine a little fun in character and NPC interactions maybe. Nevermind charisma rolls, but how does the High Priestess look upon you when you have dragon boils? Or even just a simple cold, with red-rimmed eyes, streaming nose and slight clumsiness?
Maybe getting sick in a game is a sign that you need to rest your character. You could push on through the jungle, try to find a trail to the Hidden City of Somewhere, but you'll make things worse. Three days of rest at camp should see you right though (of course, someone else might get there first...).
I'm definitely not an expert on games, not by a long shot, I just can't think of any games that I've played in, run or read which have rules for the consequences of simple (or complicated) illness.
Can you? What would you do if characters got sick?
Thursday, 17 September 2015
What are those d8 Naythun Riders doing?
At the end of July, Chris McDowall wrote a post about his patrons, creating a load of people inspired by them. I've met Chris a couple of times, and I thought we got along, so was expecting that the people inspired by me would be cool ninjas, awesome dudes of noble birth, or at the very least a bunch of amazing bandits. Instead:
Thanks Chris.
What Chris doesn't know is that the Naythun Riders have a strange and complicated society, and there are lots of subgroups and clans that one could meet on the road. In fact, researchers who have observed them - even lived with them for a time - have identified a score of situations in which they are met. When you meet Naythun Riders on the road they are...
17: d8 Naythun Riders - Bearded Men riding Naked Men Twisted into Emu-Shape
3hp, Riding Crop (d6) OR Naythun Kick (d6)
- Offer you a chance to feed or pet their steed.- Muzzle their Naythun if it tries to scream out in repressed sapience.- Defend their steeds to the death and nuzzle it uncomfortably.
Thanks Chris.
What Chris doesn't know is that the Naythun Riders have a strange and complicated society, and there are lots of subgroups and clans that one could meet on the road. In fact, researchers who have observed them - even lived with them for a time - have identified a score of situations in which they are met. When you meet Naythun Riders on the road they are...
- Arguing over who has the most magnificent beard.
- In the middle of racing their Naythuns.
- Mourning the death of a Naythun.
- Singing loudly and tunelessly.
- Debating the merits of various beard care regimens.
- Sitting drinking, halfway to a drunken stupor.
- Shaming one of their number by shaving his beard off.
- Planning a feast.
- Forming a raiding party.
- Looking for somewhere to camp for the night.
- Trying to find something to drink.
- Trying to find treasure that they hid when they were drunk.
- Celebrating a young rider's first facial hairs.
- Looking for new potential Naythuns to train.
- Writing bad haiku / That's exploring life and death / And, like, things. Yeah.
- Grooming their Naythuns.
- Playing a game of pretend and make believe.
- Washing their beards in blood and water.
- Plotting murder.
- Committing murder.
Tuesday, 1 September 2015
The Why of Oddpool
At the start of 2015 I was really interested in playing Into The Odd, and while the print edition hadn't gone to press yet I had the pdf and two interested players in the form of Patrick Stuart and David McGrogan. The system looked so simple to run, I thought that I would take a stab at quickly putting some notes together for a sort of city crawl. Liverpool is just on my doorstep, and it's where all three of us grew up around or lived for a while, so it seemed like it would be fun.
As it happenened, on the day, we were playing in the cafe of the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton, which looks out over the River Mersey and at an old sea defence, Fort Perch Rock. It made sense to me then to start the adventure there, a weird some-when counter-Earth that is fundamentally Odd. Captain Jean wants Henry Winkler (Patrick) and Karl Kennedy (Dave) to go into the ruined city of Oddpool to scout it out, see what they can find and report back.
They cross the river on a converted ferry boat, and then creep around the streets, tangling with strange gangs, mechsuit-corpses, zombies and a bizarre sheep-banana-hybrid giant. They made deals with a gang, ran from danger and survived despite their retainers taking a couple of hits. It was a lot of fun to run, and then after writing a quick AP on G+, the ideas went back on to the back burner as with so many other projects.
Flash forward to the summer, and I'm meeting Patrick and Dave again, along with Into The Odd's Chris McDowall, in order to playtest Dave's new project. I bring along my copies of their books for them to sign, and made a little Pocketmod from some of my Oddpool notes so that I didn't feel left out. I shared the pdf on G+, zero artwork, really rough around the edges, and a fair few people seemed to like it, and so the wheels started turning again...
So I am, simple as that. I've been working on this in my spare time (and sometimes not in my spare time!) for the best part of a month, off of notes and ideas that have been percolating for about eight months. It's a little 8-page booklet that gets folded from a single sheet of A4. Directly compatible with Into The Odd, easily hacked ideas for other systems. If I make any profits from making this available I'm going to be reinvesting them into artwork for other projects (and I might go for tea and toast with my wife and daughter).
More soon: tomorrow, three groups that operate within the ruins of Oddpool...
As it happenened, on the day, we were playing in the cafe of the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton, which looks out over the River Mersey and at an old sea defence, Fort Perch Rock. It made sense to me then to start the adventure there, a weird some-when counter-Earth that is fundamentally Odd. Captain Jean wants Henry Winkler (Patrick) and Karl Kennedy (Dave) to go into the ruined city of Oddpool to scout it out, see what they can find and report back.
They cross the river on a converted ferry boat, and then creep around the streets, tangling with strange gangs, mechsuit-corpses, zombies and a bizarre sheep-banana-hybrid giant. They made deals with a gang, ran from danger and survived despite their retainers taking a couple of hits. It was a lot of fun to run, and then after writing a quick AP on G+, the ideas went back on to the back burner as with so many other projects.
Flash forward to the summer, and I'm meeting Patrick and Dave again, along with Into The Odd's Chris McDowall, in order to playtest Dave's new project. I bring along my copies of their books for them to sign, and made a little Pocketmod from some of my Oddpool notes so that I didn't feel left out. I shared the pdf on G+, zero artwork, really rough around the edges, and a fair few people seemed to like it, and so the wheels started turning again...
For the longest time I've wanted to publish something for role-playing games. Why not have the first step be a little Pocketmod? I have lots of pictures of Liverpool, I live nearby and can take more, I have the tools to typeset something simple... Why not do it?
So I am, simple as that. I've been working on this in my spare time (and sometimes not in my spare time!) for the best part of a month, off of notes and ideas that have been percolating for about eight months. It's a little 8-page booklet that gets folded from a single sheet of A4. Directly compatible with Into The Odd, easily hacked ideas for other systems. If I make any profits from making this available I'm going to be reinvesting them into artwork for other projects (and I might go for tea and toast with my wife and daughter).
More soon: tomorrow, three groups that operate within the ruins of Oddpool...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)